roped on, ever on
to the darkness coming faster and faster down upon them--to declare
that the cause of their trouble was Mr. Memminger; with the President
behind him.

But, though the people saw the mismanagement and felt its cause--though
they suffered from it as never nation suffered before--though they
spoke always bitterly and often hotly of it; still, in their greatest
straits and in their darkest hours, no southern man ever deemed it but
mismanagement.

The wildest and most reckless slanderer could never hint that one shred
of all the flood of paper was ever diverted from its proper channel by
the Secretary; or that he had not worked brain and body to the utmost,
in the unequal struggle to subdue the monster he had created.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ACROSS THE POTOMAC AND BACK.

Of such vast import to the southern cause was Lee's first aggressive
campaign in Maryland; so vital was its need believed to be, by the
people of the South; so varied and warm was their discussion of it that
it may seem proper to give that advance more detailed consideration.

Imperfect and inadequate as such a sketch must be, to the soldier, it
may still convey in some sort, the ideas of the southern people upon a
momentous question.

Coincident with the evacuation of the Peninsula by the Federals was
General Lee's movement, to throw beyond the Rapidan a force sufficient
to prevent Pope's passage of that river. After Cedar Mountain, Jackson
had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up. It was believed
in the North that the advance of Pope's masses had cut him off from the
main army and locked him up in the Shenandoah Valley; while the
South--equally ignorant of his designs and confident of their
success--rested on the rumor that he had said:

"Send me more men and no orders!"

Suddenly a beacon flashed into the sky, telling in the flames from the
depots at Manassas and Bristow Stations that the famous passage of
Thoroughfare Gap had been made--millions of property, stores and
rolling-stock given to feed the flames. Jackson was in Pope's rear!

This Confederate corps now fronted toward the main army of Lee, and the
bragging Federal found himself between the upper and nether millstones.
Still he had little doubt that he could turn upon the small force of
Jackson and crush it before Lee could advance to his rescue. Following
this plan, and depending also upon the heavy masses Burnside was
bringing down to him from Frede